Prime Minister David Cameron is drawing up plans to bring forward an in/out referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU by a year to 2016 in order to avoid a politically dangerous clash with the French and German elections in 2017, the Guardian reported. “The mood now is definitely to accelerate the process and give us the option of holding the referendum in 2016,” the paper cited a source. “We had always said that 2017 was a deadline rather than a fixed date.” In negotiations with his EU peers, Cameron is still seeking EU Treaty changes. cep expert Bert Van Roosebeke, however, believes that this is an unrealistic goal. Still, the EU member states cannot allow that Cameron returns empty handed to London from the negotiations either, Van Roosebeke told Reuters. “It would be tactically very stupid to give Cameron nothing and send him into a referendum like that,” he argued.